Google Editions Delayed… Again

Google Editions is slowly coming online, but there are still a lot of questions about it, and not many answers. While they have been busy signing up partners, details about the new-to-come service have been few and far between (other than it can take two months for a book to go live. Ouch). Now there is word that Google has delayed their launch a bit, saying they’ll launch it only when they feel it is really ready (perhaps up to 6 months while other sources say it will be later in 2010).

Google Editions is a cloud-based solution with limited or no downloading of the books, which means you ‘rent’ or ‘lease’ ebooks from them. Unless they come up with something really extraordinary to make readers give up flexibility and the lack of ownership, it doesn’t sound like a good bookstore from a reader’s viewpoint.

But, we’ll see. Once the fine details are announced. And with considering the delays already with Google Editions, who knows how long we’ll have to wait.